33 Misfortunes

As time goes by, I think this is my favorite essay on writing ever.

And it's not even about writing. It's about programming.

But it holds perfectly true for me and writing, and sometimes there are days like today--not helped by it being in the mid-eighties for the first time this summer--that sleep seems impossible. And there ain't no melatonin I can take.

After cheerily churning out 6,000 words on Satuday I spent ALL of Sunday arguing with myself about fairy alchemy and what that would consist of, excoriating myself for lack of being good at coming up with Plot and threat-matrices for my characters, and hating life. I baked, I knit, I played Rock Band, I wrestled with my dog--still couldn't sleep.

I think I sort of have the chapter in my head now but I'm still not really happy with it. I feel like there's some Awesome I don't quite have, that my ideas are not Awesome enough yet.

Whenever I complain about things like this, my Beast always kisses my forehead and exclaims: Thirty-three misfortunes! Which is a Russian saying for everything being a mess. My brain always wants to add: but a bitch ain't one to that, because I am a decadent American girl. But I feel like that today--nothing's really all that bad, I'm just bookblocked. The root here would be cockblocked, not writer's block--I don't really believe in writer's block. Or at least, I can't believe in it and keep functioning. But my personal lameness, procrastination, and inability to come up with sufficient Awesome can get in the way of congress with my book.

Apropos of nothing, I was deeply creeped out by this video, sent to me by

pachamama , in which the universe mocks my noble sacrifice by pointing out that if you strip the goth make up off of her, Amy Lee and I are apparently secret twins. (The money shot is at 1:49--

justbeast and I both sort of jumped back, that's how eerie it is.)

Aaaaand the gem just came out of my nose piercing. Literally just fell onto the keyboard with a little plink. WTF? Second nose piercing to bork itself in a week!

( 16 comments — Write On My Skin )

celestineangel

2009-07-27 06:47 pm (UTC)

You are always full of Awesome to me!

yuki_onna

2009-07-27 06:48 pm (UTC)

The gulf between Awesome and Not Awesome Enough is vast.

2009-07-27 06:51 pm (UTC)

If I didn't live too far away to make the drive in a few hours, I'd march myself over to your place and make it known how full of Way Awesome Enough to are. Weilding a well-worn copy of Palimpsest and getting-there worn copies of The Orphan's Tales if I had to.

I believe in tough love. ^___^

2009-07-27 06:55 pm (UTC)

One's own standards are always hardest to live up to. ;)

2009-07-27 11:19 pm (UTC)

Don't I know it.

That's why it's important to take encouragement when and where you get it and let it bolster you. Even if it comes in the form of someone threatening to kick your ass if you don't realize how Very Full of Awesome Enough you are.

>.>

<.<

Not that I've done that. Yet.

pachamama

2009-07-27 07:14 pm (UTC)

oh dear oh dear, you are far far more Awsome than Amy will ever be. You have more Awsome in the hole in your nose than she has in her whole little chirstianemogoth body.

2009-07-27 07:21 pm (UTC)

and I never meant to creep you out. it was indeed a noble sacrifice of the highest order.

emilytheslayer

2009-07-27 07:22 pm (UTC)

Yeah, because of you? For about the past week any time anyone has mentioned any numbered thing, I have mentally appended "and a bitch ain't one.'

elissa_carey

2009-07-27 07:28 pm (UTC)

I like that word/idea, "bookblocked." That's just a little slice of Awesome right there.

Perhaps a few new methods for "falling asleep" could be tried? Could be just a slight change in routine is needed to help jumpstart the process. If nothing else, introducing a newness might make you irritated and go back to the things that worked before, and voila! They are indeed working again. (Does that make sense to you? I know it makes sense to me, but I know it won't necessarily translate.)

sizztheseed

2009-07-27 07:36 pm (UTC)

The description is totally true. The only thing I can describe the sensation I get from programming is this strange faculty to manipulate the untouchable. Vistas and ethereal objects are counter-pointed by a thin thread of consciousness that changes the material by touching it, like a collapsing Heisenberg actuality, resulting in the path to a clear solution and the ground that path walks on as well.

And it is like dreaming, where the flashes and twinkles of light behind closed eyes are resolved into pictures, maps, and all of it is illuminated by the self-that-talks-to-the-self and makes a narrative out of the days' events and the Rorschach patterns of the random firing of neurons.

And spinning make-believe out of the straw of thought is likewise the same. It's a problem like programming, a fiddling with nothingness like a dream, and ultimately, a making of something real out of the intangible.

Bravo, that poster.

Now I can take some heart in the idea that my neurosis is a feature, not a bug.

Hopefully not a creeping feature.

Heh.